Whoa, Bono Pokes Fun at His Aid Fundamentalism

Dear readers, rest assured that I do not watch films replete with toilet humour on a regular basis. I prefer to watch, ah, documentaries. This bias, however, has let me down in one respect: I missed the spoof above from the closing credits of Sacha Baron Cohen's latest release, Bruno, where he plays a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista. I find Cohen's brand of comedy too puerile; although his main characters are interesting--Ali G, Borat, and Bruno--they are too much when taken in excess amounts such as in film-length features. He's already done satire on America's underbelly with his previous film so the current one is a tad repetitive. The clip above, though, is something of a welcome diversion at only two and a half minutes.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that Cohen is a graduate of no less than Cambridge, where he studied under famed economic historian Niall Ferguson. (As an aside, Ferguson will be a scholar in residence like yours truly--albeit a somewhat better known one--at LSE IDEAS this year.)

Anyway, this clip makes me warm to Bono a bit for a number of reasons. Many think of him as an insufferable blowhard; I have often shared this sentiment. While I do like U2 tunes in general, his stances on aid for Africa can become grating in their stridence. Here, however, Bono participates in a pretty funny send-up of "USA for Africa" and "Live Aid" with fellow pop stars Chris Martin (of Coldplay), Sir Elton John, Slash, Sting, and Snoop Dogg. I particularly like Elton's spoof of Bono's sunglasses fetish with his spectacles featuring the words "EJ" prominently showing on the lenses. If you missed it, his piano chair is a man crouched on all fours. Weird.

Maybe Bono can win over those who think him too overbearing. As I said, small doses of Sacha Baron Cohen can work in some instances. "The Dove of Peace" works for me: I have a dream for the Third World: clean water, food and teaching...

UPDATE: There is a much clearer copy of "Dove of Peace" on YouTube. Unfortunately, I cannot use it as the resolution is wider than my current template. I've thought of updating my template to make it wider but I've noticed that many visitors still have monitor resolutions of 1024x768. Since viewing pleasure is my #1 goal, I'll keep this template until nearly all users migrate to 1280x1024 or higher.